I would like to seek input on what you would like to see implemented or added in the New Year. This isn't related exclusively to the screening process or database entries, but more geared toward out-of-the-box and innovative ideas that can enhance the existing content of the website, while enticing new talent to join our community.

International contributions

If I am right, RPN has now established itself as an international reference. It is probably the one and only worldwide web site for railroad photography.

However:

1) An overwhelming majority of pictures are American, probably followed by Canada, Australia and the UK, i.e. coming from the English-speaking community. ==> There is much room to increase the flow of contributors and contributions from non-US and non-English-speaking photographers

2) Competitors are growing in the form of Flickr, FB, etc. and photographers have other ways of sharing their pictures with the rest of the world on the Internet. ==> Any initiative to reinforce RPN as "the" reference site and most important RR photography repository will be beneficial for RPN and for the railroad photography as a whole.

So here are some suggestions:

iv) Introduce foreign languages in RPN.
I know of many good photographers that would contribute if they would feel confident enough with the English language.

This can be done in several ways:

- Like many international web sites do (e.g. big corporations), add small clickable flags (icons) on the home page, member page, "Add your photos" page and some other key pages to change from English to Spanish, German, French and/or selected other major languages.
I understand how burdensome it may be for RPN staff to achieve that. Obviously RPN needs help to do that. I do volunteer to prepare the French translations of the most important pages or texts (e.g. rejection motives). And RPN can probably find (reach out to?) Spanish speaking and German speaking contributors (Georg T. ?) to do the same.

- Allow for contributors to speak their native language in the remarks section under their pictures. After all, we have Internet translators available if needed.

- Extend / change the automated list of locomotives in the upload section (and parallel it in the database search criteria) so as to uniformize the non-US locomotive types and make the search criteria more efficient. Again, I volunteer to submit a standardized list of engines for France, Georg could do that for Switzerland, etc. As is the case now with the existing list, not all and every existing engine type should be represented given the "Other Locomotive (if not listed)" option.

v) Extend the screeners team: include one or several (?) reliable volunteer non-US screeners that would be allowed to screen only non-US (and Canada) pictures, and that would of course NOT screen for their own submitted pictures.

Ideally, RPN would end up with 1 screener for Asia-Pacific, 1 for Europe, 1 for Rest of the world, i.e. South America and Africa.

Of course, such new screeners should commit to follow RPN rules and participate in screeners’ team internal meetings / discussions, etc.

Perhaps if possible, the new screener would become active after a test period.